politicalowl

Edition 1SUN 02 FEB 1997, Page 047 Minority poised for victory By RICHARD FARMER   THE moral minority is on the verge of a horrible victory. While the opinion pollsters might tell us an overwhelming majority of Australians favour voluntary euthanasia, the Federal Parliament is about to veto a Northern Territory law that allows it. The House of Representatives has already voted that way and the Senate is almost certainly going to follow suit. Yet again, what the people think is being proved irrelevant. There are two reasons that occur to me in explanation of the willingness of our elected members of parliament to ignore the views of those they are elected to represent. The first is the unfortunate ability of a minority which feels strongly about a question to influence MPs in a way that a sensible majority never can. Very few, if any, of the 75 per cent of ordinary Australians who support euthanasia would switch their vote from one candidate to another on the basis of this issue a...